Fitrah: The Inherent Nature - Hamza Yusuf

so once the the child comes out it comes into the next stage of dunya so dunya has five stages the first stage is one through he says five and there's another one that goes with seven which is consistent with the Western tradition you could either go one to seven or one to 15 if you go one to seven which is also considered a classical Islamic category during these first seven years it's the responsibility of the parents to nurture the child this is a time that there is absolutely no responsibility none it's prohibited to to have any physical discipline during this time even up till 10 physical discipline is not permitted in in Sharia other than the scholars say it like twisting the ear right grabbing the stomach you know pinching the stomach giving them pinches any type of physical violent force is prohibited in any situation whether it's male adult female adult or child is prohibited for any violent physical abuse that is Haram in Sharia absolutely and there's no proof or justification for it and what we're going to look at the verse that a lot of people misunderstand including unfortunately some Muslims about that but it's it's well known in the Islamic sharia that it is prohibited to physically strike anyone with violence mm-hmm no that's poor on ya it's there's several verses that deal with that actually but the one I gave you was 20 to 5 now in 20 to 5 it continues and it says afterward we bring you forth as infants the word in Arabic this stage is called the thatha means in arabic poof a li is a parasite the little is somebody that cannot live on its own it needs a host so the child needs the parents and this is the responsibility of the parents to nurture the child now the prophet mohammed salah dias a time said that every child is born on fitrah and this is an important concept in islam filtra is the inherent nature of the human being it's his aboriginal nature it is believed in Islam that human beings are good in their nature and it is it is diseased societies that will affect the the nature in a diseased way now this obviously doesn't is not congruence with the traditional Christian belief of the corrupt nature but there is a similarity between the Islamic and the Christian belief in that there is a hadith that says that every child is born with a black seed in the heart and this is similar but not the same as the understanding of original sin yeah this is going to be the shield the actions of the parents affect their children and there are like in the Bible the idea of visiting on seven generations which is you know it's a lot you're dealing with sixty four parents there is that concept in Islam that your actions do affect your offspring but there is no accountability of the offspring in other words nobody bears the burden of you do not like in some of the Chinese traditions you have the idea of inherited curses you know that a family gets cursed for doing wrong in one generation and their offspring will suffer the fate of that curse but there is a belief in Islam that you that righteousness will affect your offspring and also wrongs will affect your offspring Indonesian but was elected in the census it starts all over and addiction an addiction right and the mother is responsible for that not the baby so the mother has has affected the and that's we have that ability to completely destroy the fitrah the parents can do that to the child they can ruin it and that's what happens Fedora is not you know children will not be if they're nurtured properly now there is a bad seed there is a concept of bad seed in Islam there's definitely a concept in other words there is a belief that there are shall thin and intz which are demonic humans and this results one that demons will actually partake in the insemination that there's Hadees that indicate that people that are like in fornication in and it's interesting because Islam accepts marriage in every tradition you know even though it doesn't accept the the Buddhists as a people of the book that you know they're accepted as a as a tradition in that they can pay the jizya tax according to imam attic but they're there their books are not accepted as revealed books they're not rejected but they're not accepted it's not in the articles of faith like the the Bible and the gospel but Buddhist marriage is accepted if if two buddhists become muslim their marriage is violent they don't have to renew that marriage because marriage is believed to be a divine institution that it was through revelation that marriage came about so marriage in any tradition is accepted and therefore children that are born of legitimate marriage in any tradition those children have the protection of the the sanctity of the men of the you children born out of wedlock do not have that protection and there can be effects on the children because of that and one of the things that the profits a lot is that I'm said is beware the wrath of bastard children beware the wrath of bastard children that if you do that to children they will be angry and their wrath will come back to you and he said if a legitimacy spreads amongst the people then they are spreading the wrath of God amongst themselves and the wrath is in the children because that was a right that you have deprived them up they have a right to legitimacy and if you do not give them that you have oppressed them an oppression engenders anger and they are often they don't know why they're angry right they don't know why they're angry but they're angry and and for our country when you're looking at seventy percent the legitimacy rates amongst certain communities right and the dominant community it's it's it's in the forty percentile range right that which a lot of you grew up in an age where you know girls disappeared in high school right I mean it's really amazing how much has changed in our generation right I mean in in 1968 a woman was kicked out of Vassar for living with a man in an apartment 68 and it's it's really interesting how how that's happened in this culture so this fit the nature is this inherent nature and it is that the potential for good and evil exist but the inclination is too good if it's nurtured but the seed of evil can be nurtured also and if that's done then you get people that that will they're inclined to doing bad stuff not good stuff absolutely and there is no responsibility until puberty of the child it all falls on the parents after puberty according to the hadith the parents are taken to account in the next life but not in this life once the chap you know like if you've got children that were raised brutalized right by their father you know or a crack cocaine mother who doesn't do anything for a child these type things the responsibility this is why you can't judge people in this world in any absolute sense the Prophet said I was commanded to judge outwardly but not inwardly we we do not have the authority to make inward judgments against people we can only judge outwardly and those outward judgments in Sharia are related to transgressions but you cannot condemn people to hell you can't at none of that that's all inward judgment and we have no authority in that realm the variables that are involved in any human action are so vast that no individual can grasp them we can but responsibility is lies on the adult once you reach adulthood you are responsible and in Sharia it's not gonna hold up in court to have a psychologist in there explaining what happened when they were children and why they're doing that that does not hold up in in in Sharia Court although Sharia laws are often contextualized in that upon decide to implement a HUD punishment one of the the penal punishments because of contextual circumstances that that does exist so there is that realm it's it's very organic the Islamic legal system it's it's not black and white at all Sharia if they're adult they're responsible although this culture bias on you cannot apply Islamic law in the United States you can't it would be completely unacceptable because Islamic law is organic it's it's a it's a holistic system you cannot have sort like let's chop off the hands of thieves and you have a consumer culture where the whole society is is is is is locked in to the the system of creating consumption as an addiction right I mean you have to change it's it's you know the Islamic legal system the first chapter of Islamic law books is called the chapter of purity I mean it's a spiritual tradition before it's a legal tradition and so you can't cannot impose the legal laws on a materialistic society you have to introduce and this is why the Meccan stage precedes the medinan stage the Meccan stage had no legal rulings it was a stage of changing the perceptions of the people and once that shift took place this radical paradigm shift once that took place then the rules begin to make sense but to apply the rules without that would be injustice which is what you know this is the kind of conservative approach let's just make harsher laws right see the problem is the laws aren't harsh enough well you know why are people doing what they're doing and why is it that our our prisons you know are over 60% in fact in most places it's more like seventy five eighty percent minority now why is that well that's more evidence you know that these are inferior type people I mean there's a lot of that's an unspoken belief amongst a lot of people in this country you know I mean there's a lot of people that are politically correct in their public discourse not in their private discourse there's a lot of people that say well you know these people you know they're different from us they have different values whatever or no values so whereas the Islamic situation is saying look what's going on right that these situations are being produced what's in generating this because this is alien you see if if you go to black African if you go to a Gambian village where there's no crime right I mean it's true or not true and isn't it a large percentage of the african-americans in this country are from Senegambia right this their genetic inheritance so why is it that a Gambian African in his village is not stealing raping and pillaging right and their 12 year olds aren't going around doing gangbang and yet the same genetic bank in in the inner cities of New York or right or Chicago are doing that you see what's going on well from the Islamic perspective you have a diseased Society and therefore you have symptomatic pathology and the pathology is manifesting in children that are being raised in a diseased engendering culture so during these seven years it's not encouraged to teach children either because they're learning they have their own learning schedule and in traditional cultures you did not begin to train children until they reach seven which is consistent also with the the Waldorf right Rudolph Steiner fell back in the 20s that if we begin to educate children at the age of five we are going to see precocious sexual development occurring and the reason he said that is is because you're dealing with a divine programming that's designed at that if you if you bring programming that's not meant to be introduced earlier then you're gonna pull the whole process down so instead of the sexual maturation occurring like in this culture when people who here might have grown up in the 50s at the age of fourteen most boys and girls were not thinking about sexual experimentation right really they weren't and you can talk to your parents if you're not that old right I mean this is not I'm not making this up this is even the menage has you know the the the the the period now we have early onset periods we've got girls now at 7 & 8 that are beginning to menstruate ins in certain areas right so something's going on right now if you introduce it's actually considered damaging now this is not true of all children there will be because there you're going to have children that want to read at the age of 3 or 4 but the vast majority of children are not going to be like that and so they're doing their work between 1 & 7 they know exactly what they're supposed to be doing and you let them do that they're developing their their minds and and they're actually they are according to Islam and according to a lot of our neurological research it's confirming these ancient beliefs because this is not just Islam this this this is congruence with many traditions 7 was an age of initiation in many many traditions and in the classical European oral culture before Christianity litter eyes that area 7 was actually you were an adult at 7 you went from childhood to adulthood at the age of 7 because in oral cultures 7 year olds speak like adults and you'll notice a radical change in the the ability of a child to articulate at about the age of 7 and 8 there's a real change in their ability to express themselves and this is why even in England you know in the 8th 9th century at 7 year olds and 8 year olds were being hung for a horse theft right which I mean obviously that's horrific but it's indicative of an oral culture and how they view and this is why you will find marriage occurred in oral cultures at early ages also it was not uncommon in Europe Asia the Middle East Africa for an eight or a nine year-old girl to be married not uncommon at all because they were considered to have already reached the age of maturation in the oral understanding

Channel: Islam On Demand

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Length: 20min 32sec (1232 seconds)

Published: Fri May 10 2013